I've been playing for 15+ years and I started to take lessons this past fall. The instructor mention something to me that no one else ever did. He told me that I'm using a different muscle that I should be. He said that I'm lifting my fingers to high off the fretboard. I've been trying to break this habit nothing is clicking. Any tips on how to stop this?

First, I think for the most part 4 fingers should always be spanned across 4 frets

they should always be hoovering over the frets- so at any time any of them can snap on a note quickly

on top of that- my best adviceBE LAZY

what i mean by that- put in the least amount of work/effort/movement possible to get what you want accomplished

in the same manner you would learn going from one open chord to another... apply that to lead stuff

work on alt picking and practice scales with a metronome and get everything working together in time and consistent so you can fine tune the effort/the movement in your fretting to put the last amount of work possible and smallest movement to do everything you need to-

feel free to post/send a video if you wantand i can help a little more/better

you might need to get a little better wrist position and back of the hand position on the back of the neck- maybe a guitar with a thinner neck- like an Ibanez RG isntead of a fat les paul or strat

Have you seen how high Steve lifts his fingers off the fretboard? You could park a car under his riffing fingers! Compare that with Tony MacAlpine who's fingers you can barely see being lifted. I doubt very much it's a big issue so just practise as much as you can and you'll improve.

yes there are guitar teachers out there that talk alot of gobble d **** ,..there are so many different ways ,those that get noticed are the ones that are unique in most cases ,..still there isnt a guitar player that I have meet and didnt learn something from ,.

it depends on how it affects articulation, if it PREVENTS you from certain abilities. If not, than I'm not sure it matters. If you've been playing for fifteen years (a year longer than I've been alive), your not going to immediately just stop certain aspects of your playing that fifteen years has engraved in stone